president at a fund-raiser celebrating his 45th birthday.
Spotlights lit the dark stage. A drumroll sounded. But
Monroe was nowhere to be seen. “A woman about whom
it truly may be said she needs no introduction. Let me
just say, here she is,” Lawford said. Again, nothing.
Finally, as Lawford launched into yet another attempt,
Monroe emerged, shimmying across the stage in a
flesh-colored gown. As she cozied up to the podium,
Lawford made his final introduction: “Mr. President,
the late Marilyn Monroe.”
Monroe shielded her eyes from the glare of the
spotlight, which electrified her platinum hair and
the 2,500 rhinestones decorating her dress. It was a
moment rich with anticipation and bawdy curiosity.
Some 15,000 people sat expectantly in the audience,
including Ella Fitzgerald, Jack Benny, Robert Kennedy,
and, of course, the president. Monroe caressed the
microphone, then crooned her tribute: “Happy birth-
day to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday,
Mr. Pres-i-dent, happy birthday to you.”
Lawford’s use of the word “late” was meant to be a
ribbing of Monroe’s notorious tardiness in her personal
and professional life. In retrospect, it haunts like the
grim reaper. Underneath the glitz, Marilyn Monroe
was a profoundly troubled woman who yearned for
love and stability. The embodiment of life, beauty, and
sensuality, she was also self-destructive and suicidal.
Monroe’s symptoms included a feeling of emptiness, a
split or confused identity, extreme emotional volatility,
and impulsivity—all characteristics of a condition
called borderline personality disorder.
Three months after her tribute to the president,
Monroe would indeed become the late Marilyn Monroe.
“Our angel, the sweet angel of sex,” as Norman Mailer
famously referred to her, would be dead at the age of 36.
MARILYN MONROE WAS BORN as Norma Jeane
Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in the charity ward of Los
Angeles County Hospital. She never knew her father.
Her mother, Gladys—later diagnosed with paranoid
schizophrenia—was incapable of providing the affec-
tion and security her daughter needed. Monroe spent
her early childhood in a foster family, and although she
saw her mother, the encounters were stressful. “I used
to be frightened when I visited her and spent most of
my time in the closet of her bedroom hiding among
her clothes,” Monroe recalled. “She seldom spoke to
me except to say, ‘Don’t make so much noise, Norma.’ ”
People with borderline personality disorder of-
ten experience significant traumas early in life—
separation from a parent, death of a parent, or ne-
glect from caregivers. Monroe’s childhood experience
stirred deep feelings of desolation and emptiness. “As
I grew older, I knew I was different from other children
because there were no kisses or promises in my life.
I often felt lonely and wanted to die,” she reflected.
One of the hallmark features of the condition is
what psychiatrists call “identity disturbance.” Without
a stable sense of self, people with borderline person-
ality disorder are exceedingly sensitive to how they
are perceived, and often find self-worth by pleasing
others. As a child, Monroe was forced to adjust to
new surroundings; on screen, she took on multiple
identities; in the public spotlight, she played the
seductress everyone wanted to see. “My work is the
only ground I’ve ever had to stand on,” she said in an
interview. “ To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole
superstructure with no foundation.”
All of this played out in Monroe’s relationships,
which were markedly intense and unstable. People
with borderline personality disorder demand constant
attention and reassurance, wearing out the people they
turn to for support. None of Monroe’s three marriages
lasted. She divorced her first husband, a merchant
marine named James Dougherty, in 1946. Her marriage
to Joe DiMaggio in 1954 was over in nine months.
Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller, who married
in 1956, stayed together for five years. But during that
time, Miller wrote in his memoir, Timebends: A Life,
he discovered “a troubled woman whose despera-
tion was deepening no matter where she turned for a
way out.” By the time filming started for Miller’s 1961
movie, The Misfits, which starred Monroe as a young
152 national geographic • May 2017